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The goose that laid the golden egg is once again on the chopping block. This refers to a puppet show presented by the early San Antonio Conservation Society in 1924 as they mounted a successful campaign to stop what is now the River Walk from being paved over as part of a flood control project. The river, and our history in general, is the source of much of our cultural heritage. Those preservationists, to whom we owe so much, understood that it is not simply San Antonio's history but rather the evidence of that history — our historic buildings and public spaces — that must be saved in order to preserve our identity.

The goose is now again in danger as we consider the high-rise project being proposed atop the former Joske's department store. The issue is not the architecture but the sheer mass of the structure and its impact on our spatial experience of Alamo Plaza.

This is not the first time a massive development has threatened the scale of one of the nation's most sacred public spaces. In 1912, a group including San Antonio's premier architect at the time, Alfred Giles, initiated a plan to raise $2 million to erect the Alamo Heroes Monument in Alamo Plaza. The obelisk, as designed by Giles, was to be 802 feet tall, comparable to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It is hard to imagine that the backers did not see that the immense scale of their proposal would demean the very shrine that they sought to celebrate.

In spite of setting up a fundraising effort in every Texas county, the group was unable to come up with the money. What the city got, instead, is the Cenotaph in Alamo Plaza, by sculptor Pompeo Coppini. It is large but not overwhelming. The failure of the earlier proposal resulted in a far more appropriate success.

Like many San Antonio boosters before and after, Giles was not one to be dissuaded. Six years after presenting his tower design, Giles included it on the back cover of a publication, “Great San Antonio, the city of destiny and your destination,” along with his personal vision of what San Antonio might look like in the future.

As presented in several panoramic drawings, Giles envisioned the Alamo hemmed in on all sides by an entirely new downtown filled with 15-story buildings, including a grand hotel adjacent to the Alamo, all designed, apparently, by Giles. Gone was the organic shape of Alamo Plaza, replaced by neat rectangular parks. His brave new city was perhaps less a vision of growth and prosperity and more a grandiose marketing effort for Giles. However, a vision, no matter how grand, is insufficient if it ignores reality.

In the 1960s, the city of Austin was concerned about preserving the scale of the city skyline. It was the beginning of the Austin boom that continues to this day. At that time, the Austin skyline was marked by two monuments that defined the city — the state capital dome and the University of Texas tower. While city agencies hammered out development restrictions that would limit new construction in downtown Austin to a height that would not compete with its two landmark buildings, a developer built an apartment tower between the Capitol and the university that exceeded the height limits then being discussed. At that point, the issue became moot. The current Austin skyline, which dwarfs the two original landmarks, is the result.

So, who in San Antonio is now threatening the goose that laid the golden egg? It's not the architects. They have good track records with many design awards to prove it. Is it the developer? Not at all. A project of the scale being proposed at this location is a smart move. The developers have already shown that they are willing to revise the project in response to public concerns. Also, they made the decision early on to save the Joske's building, or at least its exterior shell. If they didn't propose this project, someone in the near future, seeing San Antonio's potential, would have come up with a similar idea.

No, the culprits are us, the people and elected officials of San Antonio. We should have seen this coming 50 years ago, but we did nothing. We should have put height and mass restrictions in place to protect the Alamo and Alamo Plaza before someone, in good faith, spent their money and time on a proposal that did not violate any planning or zoning restrictions.

If we, the people, are the problem, then we are the solution. Mayor Julián Castro understands planning complexities and has some political capital. Diego Bernal, the City Council representative for District 1, which includes downtown, is running unopposed for re-election. It is not too late to do something, perhaps to control this project, perhaps to protect the future. On the other hand, we could rely on that other well-entrenched San Antonio tradition and simply write this off as just another done deal.